Interdisciplinary learning

Glow TV

Today we joined a Glow meet with some athletes that are competing in the Commonwealth Games. The athletes we got to hear from and ask questions were Sean Docherty who is a table tennis player, Eilish McColgan who will compete in the 3000m steeplechase, Meggan Dawson-Farrell who is a wheelchair racer and Ailsa Wyllie who plays hockey. There were lots of schools from all over Scotland joining in the meet – we even said a hello to Miss Rae’s old primary school!

Meggan told us that she set a record of 3 minutes 42 seconds in the 1500m wheelchair race when she was 19. Meggan also came 9th in the 2012 London Olympics. At the Commonwealth games there is only one event in her category and that is the 1500m. It was Meggan’s mum that took her to a sports camp when she was younger that was when she got into wheelchair racing. She has a coach now but her parents help a lot too.

We asked some questions and they answered these for us. We asked Sean what he was studying at university. He is studying Sports Science at Edinburgh University and does his training outside this.

We also asked about the athletes diets. They told us to cut down on sugar as this gives too many sugar highs followed by lows. They also said that they all followed a balanced diet with lots of chicken, fish and eggs. The thing they said was most important to think about was keeping hydrated. Nothing is off limits but everything in moderation.

Eilish was telling us all about when she broke her foot while she was running. This sounds nasty for a runner!! She had to have surgery to fix it and got metal pins in to help it fix. We asked her if it was difficult coming back after her injury and she told us it was really hard but she just had to work through it and now she is back competing again. She told us to have a look at her blog to see some ‘gruesome pictures’ as she described them – the blog is blocked in school but we’re all going straight home to look!! Eilish has a famous mum too – her mum is Liz McColgan who was also a runner. She said her mum inspired her. Miss Rae has been in a race with her mum and her mum came first with Miss Rae coming second.

Ailsa Wyllie, in addition to her hockey playing, does work with Active Schools. This means she comes in and helps coaching in schools.

We really enjoyed this Glow meet and learned lots about these Athletes. We will be looking out for them and cheering them on in just a few weeks time!

We will be looking out for more Glow meets that we can join!

Our strange week

We came into school on Monday morning and Miss Rae wasn’t there. Mrs Bokas was waiting for us today. She told us that Miss Rae was sick. To start the week we have started getting badminton training with Ewan. We got changed quickly and met him in the hall.

At the start of the lesson we played a game called shuttle run. Ewan threw the shuttlecock and we had to try to catch it in a tube thing. Then we played another warm up game to help us remember what we did last week. He threw the shuttlecock and we had to return it to him using either of the hits we had learned last week – underarm or overhead.

We played a game where we were in two teams – it was called battleships. One side sits down while the other side throw the shuttlecocks and try to hit them.

Mrs McIntyre took us outside to do some active maths. We were learning about hundredths which is not one digit beside the decimal point but the second digit after the decimal point.

Monday was also sport your trainers day so we were all wearing our trainers to school. In the afternoon we did observational drawings of our trainers.

On Monday it was Leah’s birthday and on Wednesday it was Garv’s birthday! Both were 11.

On Tuesday the adjectives wrote a script about their reading book. We needed to think about who was speaking and when but for a script we didn’t need speech marks.

At stage assembly we designed a packet for a fair trade product.

When Miss Rae came back we did some more of our topic. We learned about devolved matters which are the matters that the Scottish Parliament can influence. Reserved matters are the ones the UK Parliament discuss. We wrote out a day in the life of ourselves and underlined all the things that we do that the Scottish Parliament have influence on. We realised there was a lot of things the Scottish Parliament make decisions on.

Childline came in to speak to us about what they do. We discussed all the different types of bullying or abuse and things that might make people upset. They told us different types of things that you might report on; neglect, abuse, bullying and more. We have workbooks and stickers and a website to look at before they come back to see us again in a couple of weeks. You can call them if you feel unhappy in any way or upset or unsafe and no problem is too little or too big! They brought the mascot Buddy to see us and he is on the website.

Miss Rae was back on Wednesday and the week went back to normal. Its been a strange week!

Our trip to the Scottish Parliament

Tuesday was our trip to the Scottish Parliament. We left to go on the bus at 9:15am and got there at 10:30am. When we got there we went into the garden lobby and met our tour guides, Samantha and Louise and they gave us our passes then Miss Rae split us into groups. Half of us went to the debate chamber and the other half went to the committee room. At the committee a meeting was happening about medicines. In the debate chamber we learned that they make decisions and the first minister is Alex Salmond. After this we went to meet Elaine Smith and the class asked her lots of questions then we had our lunch and all got a picture taken with her. After this we went to the Donald Dewer library and it was where a butler was killed 100 years ago. After this we saw lots of artwork then we went to the MSP offices and had to be very quite. Finally got to go to the gift shop. Then we got on the bus to go home at 1:30pm.

Have a look at some of our pictures!!

Scotland theme

On Wednesday we went to the gym hall to see hopscotch which was all about Robert Burns. It was all about Robert Burns last supper and there was a girl in it that had to play thirteen parts while the man just had to play Robert Burns. At the start of it the girl came in as the divil to say that he was going to die. In this we learned a lot of facts like he became a very famous Scottish poet and song writer.

We are doing a topic all about Scotland and the Scottish parliament we are doing lots of stuff about Robert Burns. we made post cards for homework showing what Scotland means to us. We are making Robert Burns posters in class with our co-op learning groups and we have to research and write facts about him.

We also made maps with our group of where Cites are in scotland and where famous landmarks are in scotland we had fun doing it.